The use of bales may be an efficient and effective way to collect and store certain kinds of materials that otherwise may exist in a loosely gathered form. In agriculture, for example, bales may be a widely used method for collecting and storing grasses and other components as hay. Generally speaking, such hay bales may be formed by compressing the collected components into bundles, and then tying down or wrapping the bundles as bales to maintain the collected components in a compressed state. While such effort is sufficient to form individual bales of hay, significant additional time and labor may be required to handle the individual bales in order to put them to a productive use. For example, individual bales may be formed in a field environment directly from cut grass. This may result in numerous individual bales sporadically located throughout a field. To put these individual bales to a productive use, however, it may be required to collect them and store them at a centralized location, for example so as to provide feed for livestock. The effort required to collect such individual bales and transport them to a centralized location may entail an inefficiency in baling processes capable of improvement.
To realize such improvements, modern agricultural processes may employ various techniques to automate the collection and storage of bales. For example, automated balers may be an efficient way to form individual bales. Typically, such automated balers may be towed behind a tractor through a field. As the automated baler moves through the field, it may automate the process of compressing cut grass and wrapping the compressed cut grass as a bale. The automated baler may then serially output individual bales as the baler moves through the field. While such automation may dramatically improve the efficient formation of individual bales, the inefficiencies associated with collecting and storing such individual bales may remain.
Accordingly, modern agricultural process may further employ various kinds of bale accumulators. Typically, such bale accumulators may be towed behind the automated baler to collect individual bales output by the baler. Generally, such bale accumulators may serve to accumulate multiple bales arranged in groups, periodically depositing such grouped bales onto the ground. In this way, a baling process may result in sporadically placed groups of bales in a field rather than sporadically placed individual bales. Such placement of groups of bales may simplify the process of collecting and storing bales, as bales may be handled by group rather than one at a time.
The precise way in which individual bale accumulators arrange bales into groups prior to depositing such groups on the ground may vary greatly. Often, various automated techniques are employed to move bales about on the bale accumulator, perhaps to form groups of bales configured into rows, stacks, or the like. Further automated techniques may then be used to deposit groups on the ground, for example, by sliding, dropping, projecting, or the like.
However, the automated techniques of conventional bale accumulators may often entail a number of drawbacks. For example, the automated processes of conventional bale accumulators may frequently involve complicated procedures or multiple steps in the automated handling of bales, perhaps such as flipping, rotating, stacking, lifting, or dropping individual bales, perhaps performed on multiple platforms or multiple levels of a bale accumulator. As the number of steps in such processes increase, there may be an increased risk of failure for any given step, perhaps adversely impacting the reliability of such bale accumulators.
Moreover, such involved processes may require a bale to undergo a number of motions through a path of travel, perhaps resulting in inefficient movement of bales on such bale accumulators. Such possibly inefficient movement of bales may contribute to slowing the speed at which such bale accumulators may operate, perhaps to the point at which such bale accumulators may not be able to keep up with the output of modern balers.
Additionally, conventional bale accumulators may employ perhaps inefficient methods for maintaining bale alignment, perhaps involving aligning bales by blocking a path of travel for such bales. While creating such barriers to bale movement perhaps may serve to maintain bale alignment, such barriers also perhaps may create inefficiencies by removing more efficient paths of travel for such bales. Alternatively, some conventional bale accumulators may employ no bale alignment techniques, thus perhaps permitting a freedom of movement for such bales, but perhaps resulting in bale misalignment and correspondingly inefficient deposit of bale groups onto the ground.
The foregoing problems regarding conventional bale accumulators may represent a long-felt need for an effective solution to the same. While implementing elements may have been available, actual attempts to meet this need may have been lacking to some degree. This may have been due to a failure of those having ordinary skill in the art to fully appreciate or understand the nature of the problems and challenges involved. As a result of this lack of understanding, attempts to meet these long-felt needs may have failed to effectively solve one or more of the problems or challenges here identified. These attempts may even have led away from the technical directions taken by the present inventive technology and may even result in the achievements of the present inventive technology being considered to some degree an unexpected result of the approach taken by some in the field.